Our old friend Adam Viener, an expert maven at affiliate marketing and Google ads, has a fascinating post up at Wiseaff. It’s worth running in its entirety:

In November of 2006, I was looking to see who to vote for in our local elections in Virginia, and thought I would see if any of the candidates were doing any PPC advertising. See my post on Goyami in 2006. The post was picked up by noted political blogger Howard Mortman on ExtremeMortman.com

So here we are, 2 years later, coming up on the 2008 presidential election, and how are our candidates doing? Here is the search for presidental election on Google.

Here are the ads I see:

US Elections 2008
Be Informed About US Politics
The Republican National Convention
www.GOPConvention2008.com

Learn About 2008 Election
Who is your candidate?
Watch GenGage Candidate Videos.
www.GenerationEngage.org

The 2008 US Election
Your Source For Political News And
Insightful Opinion - 30 Days Free!
www.WashingtonTimes.com

Reston, VAReal Politics Real People
Debate the issues and run your
campaign at U4prez.com
www.u4prez.com

Presidential Election
Shaping A Generation of Globally
Conscious Leaders For Our World
www.AIDemocracy.org

‘08 Election Podcasts
Unique in-depth election coverage
from the Public Radio Exchange
08c.conversationsnetwork.org

What’s Your Earth Impact?
Reduce your Carbon Footprint
Get Your EarthLab ECP Score Now!
www.EarthLab.com

Get to Know Barack Obama
Learn more about Senator Obama at
campaign events: Register Online
BarackObama.com

It looks like paid search advertising has caught on a bit. The GOP is at the top, and Barack is at the bottom. I wonder if that is how the election results will turn out?

And as of today a search for “president” only pulls up the GOP ad.

Different takes on different parts of the web.
This Washington Post headline:

“On the Web, Supporters of McCain Wage An Uphill Battle: Republican’s Online Presence Lags Far Behind Obama’s”

versus ….
This Financial Times article:

This evening, at Mrs Clinton’s first joint meeting with Mr Obama since the campaign began, the former first lady will renew her call for the party to unify behind Mr Obama - a theme that will be echoed tomorrow when they appear for a rally in the town of Unity in New Hampshire.

But a highly vocal minority of Mrs Clinton’s supporters have chosen to ignore her plea altogether. Under the umbrella group, Just Say No Deal, diehard Clintonites have set up more than 100 anti-Obama websites in the last 20 days, most of them boiling with indignation.

Some, such as I Own My Vote and No Quarter, are self-explanatory. Others, such as Done - Democrats Over Nominating Elitists - and Puma - Party Unity My Ass - choose memorable acronyms. With nicknames such as Barky, Nobama and Oblahblah, none is complimentary towards its party’s nominee.

Could the YouTube revolution in politics backfire?

We’ve become quite enamored with YouTube’s edgy ability to bring us raw, uncensored, unscripted moments from politics for our ridiculing pleasure.  But is this public video voyeurism setting ourselves up for the next logical development:  politicians will simply provide us less raw, uncensored, unscripted moments?

The question is prompted after reading this excerpt from Washingtonian editor at large Garrett Graff’s new book “The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House” in the December issue of the magazine:

While Virginia senator George Allen faced a particularly devastating situation with his “macaca” comment, none of the 2008 candidates will escape the wrath of YouTube.

The rules of the game have changed — and not in the candidates’ favor. In the new world, candidates have to be prepared that anything they say could travel around the world before they finish a speech.

If that’s the case, then politicians will surely become even more guarded than ever before.  And that’s a terrible thing.  We will have more robotic candidates and politicians — more talking points, more platitudes, more stay-on-message public encounters.  And far less fun.  All in fear of the YouTube upload.

Savor what we’ve got.  Because by learning more now, we may learn far less real soon.

A watershed moment for folks, like me, who say the Internet is a force for good in the political world, not evil.

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,125 adults asks this question:

Which of these comes closer to your own view: (Overall, the Internet plays more of a positive role in the election campaign because it provides easy and direct access to information about the candidates); OR (Overall, the Internet plays more of a negative role in the election campaign because so much information there is unchecked or unreliable).

The result is great news:

Positive 48%
Negative 39%

In this battle to mainstream the Internet, we’ll gladly take a plurality.

Great nugget in the Washington Post story on the upcoming Democratic YouTube presidential candidate debate:

If the number of views determined the videos asked at the debate, then candidates could study the most-viewed videos and game the system, Bohrman explained. Furthermore, the most-viewed video as of Monday afternoon, he pointed out, asks if Arnold Schwarzenegger is a cyborg.

Of course, for the younger generation schooled less in “Terminator” and more in “Kindergarten Cop,” the most asked question might be whether Arnold Schwarzenegger is a substitute teacher.

Advertising Age previews the upcoming CNN/YouTube debate in South Carolina:

The Time Warner-owned network is expected to make an announcement this week about the format of the first Democratic National Committee-sanctioned debate, asking users to upload their questions to YouTube with the promise that several of them will be put to the candidates that evening.
It’s the latest example of the digitizing of the 2008 elections, where campaigning includes not only YouTube but social-networking sites and even fringe technologies such as Twitter. …
“I don’t want to get hyperbolic about it, but it’s a good first step,” said Pete Snyder, a political pollster turned CEO of New Media Strategies, an Arlington, Va., online-marketing and word-of-mouth firm that recently was acquired by Meredith Corp. “The debate format, period, doesn’t work well. If injecting user-generated content into the mix makes it more lively or connects these politics and brings it down on a level to real people, it’ll work.”

White House press briefings with Tony Snow are typically dominated by Iraq.  Today’s featured something new: YouTube.

Q Tony, what are we to read into the Pentagon opting for “YouTube” as part of its communication?
MR. SNOW: I don’t know. You’ll just have to ask — that was something they announced last week. I don’t know.
Q We’re you part of that –
MR. SNOW: No, but I think it’s a good idea.
Q Why?
MR. SNOW: Because it’s important sometimes to be able to get — it’s important to get images out that are going to portray a fuller picture of what’s going on, on the battlefield.
Q What kind of images would you like to see on “YouTube”?
MR. SNOW: I’d like to see a little bit of everything, wouldn’t you?
Q Is the White House going to use it, too, or are you satisfied with your own web –
MR. SNOW: I don’t know. I don’t — we have no immediate plans for using “YouTube.”

Will tomorrow’s news briefing feature, say, Twitter?

Web 2.0 gives us a new way to quantitatively measure political success.  And if you use Web 2.0 (YouTube, Facebook, Myspace) to measure popular reaction to the weekend’s Democratic presidential candidate dog-and-pony show, you get some surprising results.  The raw Web 2.0 data, compiled by New Media Strategies, tells a story that differs from the inside-the-Beltway and big media narrative.

Here’s how the Politico’s political editor David Mark reports the data:

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, N.Y., and Barack Obama, Ill., have a long way to go before either can claim the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. But their weekend speeches to party faithful at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting won lots of new fans and supporters, at least online.

Which presidential aspirant came out ahead online depends on the yardstick. On YouTube.com, the popular Internet video sharing site, nine clips of Clinton’s Feb. 2 speech drew 199,679 views, according Arlington, Va.-based New Media Strategies, which aggregated the data. The most popular clip of Clinton showed her proposing to put oil company profits into a strategic energy fund, a line that drew thunderous applause from the audience of Democratic activists gathered in Washington.

Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., came in a far distant second in terms of YouTube.com video Traffic. Eight clips of Edwards speaking drew only 4,006 views. Obama, widely touted as Clinton’s toughest competitor for the Democratic nomination, came in third, with candidates like Gov. Bill Richardson, N.M., and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio, trailing further.

While Obama’s Feb. 2 speech came up short on YouTube.com supporters, it fueled the largest net increase in fans on MySpace and Facebook, which largely appeal to younger audiences. Between Feb. 1 and Feb. 5, Obama’s pages on those social networking sites increased by 31,416, according to New Media Strategies. Clinton’s MySpace and Facebook supporters went up by only 1,034. Online supporters for the remaining candidates grew by only marginal amounts.

And while Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., attracted a wave of unflattering attention shortly before the DNC meeting for a widely replayed botched compliment of Obama, the episode did boost the number of his supporters on MySpace and Facebook. Biden scored a 15 percent increase in supporters on those two sites between Feb. 1 and Feb. 5. Obama came in second in that category at 11 percent. Clinton, despite the popularity of her speech on YouTube.com, only gained MySpace and Facebook supporters at a four percent clip, New Media Strategies figures show.